A Separate Peace -- John Knowles

I read this ages ago, in high school, and didn't like it.  I decided to give it a second chance. 

Even from the first page, I could see both why teachers use this as a high school text and why the average high school student (me) wouldn't connect with it. 

It's a great book, a dark coming-of-age story about friendship and betrayal and far-reaching consequences stemming from a brief moment of rage.  It's even kind of funny, in parts:

"Is that what you like best?" I said sarcastically.  I said a lot of things sarcastically that summer; it was my sarcastic summer, 1942.

But I could still totally see why the teenaged Leila didn't like it.  It starts slowly, and Gene's reminiscent voice isn't one that I would have identified with; it isn't the voice of a teenager, it's the voice of an adult looking back to when he was a teenager.  He does shift into his teenage voice when the flashback starts, but before that, it would have been pretty tough going for the young 14-year-old version of me.  I was surprised at how much of the book I remembered, though.

If you didn't like it in high school, it's totally worth another try.